Sync Original Quality still does a conversion

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
41

It’s totally possible. Even if the Plex app won’t play DTS (and I’m not saying that’s necessarily true) you still get the advantage of having Plex as a media library manager, and you can easily sync the movies you want.

The real problem has always been when Plex thinks it can’t play something natively and forces an resource-intensive transcode when you try and sync (or stream). The above custom profile stops all that and forces it to just give you the file.

Of course, if Plex was actually right and your device cannot play it, and a transcode was actually needed, you’ll have to sort that out yourself. But that’s never happened in my experience.

For DTS, there also might be a separate flag in the client (old post):

42

Before I change the profiles I will add DD audio to my movies. But finally I do not understand why it needs to remux the complete movie while live playing from the server allows a separate video and audio stream.

43

But finally I do not understand why it needs to remux the complete movie while live playing from the server allows a separate video and audio stream.

Totally agree. Add that to the list of things about Plex that drive me crazy. It’s the almost perfect solution, much like almost reaching orbital velocity…

https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/tkj9f/houston_we_have_a_problem/

2 Likes
44

This issue is driving me crazy on iPad Pro.

1 Like
45

im new to plex pass I don’t believe that :frowning: damn… plex could be so cool but… anyway

46

Should i remove everything on the Android.xml file and use yours, oy just paste your code inside the DirectPlayProfiles tag?

thank you

47

The sync is only useful if you reduce the quality because you watch on your phone of tablet.

I need original quality because:

  1. I want to avoid transcoding my 4K files (which takes 4 hours per hour of video on my mini low power PC).
  2. I connect my Plex for Android (using my phone) to a chromecast 4K, which is connected to the 4K TV in the hotel room.

My current shi**y workaround is to download the videos on my phone with FTP/onedrive (or use an SD card), then I play them with my phone’s Plex client (“Open Video File”).

I’m not a developer, but it is really hard to just copy the file from server to client?

Plex client should just copy the file, untouched, from the server and store it on my phone plex library. How hard can it be?
My plex client (android) plays local files with dtshdma, dolby TRUEHD eac3…

I wish I could simplify this process.

1 Like
48

would be nice a response from someone of the Plex team.
I just try to sync a single movie (2gb ,mkv) file that my phone can play fine but when i sync with subtitle the movie sits now newar 8gb in size, just because the subtitle. i mean… how? why?

49

Well, same Problem here, sadly the workarround that @StavrosMadK build for him self doesn’t work for me, propably because most subs are ASS format.

but what I am wondering, the original file that I have laying arround here has x264 format, is playable on my device fine without sync and just “Original” format when streaming.

But it will still encode even with the new profile…

50

It’s up to plex devs to fix it only. Our workarounds is just bandaids :confused:

51

Should i remove everything on the Android.xml file and use yours, oy just paste your code inside the DirectPlayProfiles tag?

Just to be clear for anybody who stumbles on this thread:

  1. The custom profile I posted above has nothing to do with Android specifically. It affects ALL devices. Don’t overwrite your Android.xml file.
  2. If you see Android.xml, you’re in the wrong place. Don’t save this custom profile to the default app profile location. Save to /Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Profiles which is not overwritten when you update Plex.

For anybody concerned about hacking their system to achieve a basic goal of just copying the damn file, this custom profile is a very quick and easy fix. Just be aware that you’re effectively turning off all transcoding for these media types, so if you do have incompatible devices, that’s on you to fix.

1 Like
52

Just joined Plex and paid my first month, and pretty much my whole library is anime with ASS subs… With a raspberry as the host, transcoding takes ages. Feels bad man

1 Like
53

Yikes… that may take over 9000! Years to transcode :man_facepalming:

54

For what I understood, Plex needs to transcode because my device (an iPad PRo 12,9 of late 2018) couldn’t play the file…

But it perfectly plays without transcoding when not synced. Moreover, if I download the file with DS File, it takes about 2 minutes when Plex needs more than half an hour… while you have to keep an eye on Plex because it might not download the file once converted if you don’t.

To be honest, Plex is by far my favourite application (and lightyears ahead of VOD services) but the sync features are its weakpoint :

  • this issue while syncing;
  • some issues to play synced files without connection (!!);
  • some difficulties to delete synced files (yes, I have roughly up to 300Go of synced content on my iPad as I currently do not have Internet at my flat)

Once those points will be fixed, hopefully, Plex will be perfect.

That being said, a big thank you for the Plex team and your work. I keep enjoying Plex every day and I « converted » most of my relatives… who couldn’t live without Plex anymore!! :slight_smile:

1 Like
55

After reading through this thread, I am almost crying with frustration. I just bought a brand new Android tablet and a massive micro sd card to hold a significant amount of my library for road trips. But after trying to sync a few movies (for the first time for me), I am realizing that what should be a 1-hour transfer will become like 4 weeks of transcoding.

I am trying to understand the Profiles fix given above, but I can’t even begin to start to understand what you guys are talking about. I run Plex Media Server off a Windows PC, and the file structure you have given is not even close. I can’t find anything called profiles anywhere in the whole file system. Mine looks like this: “c:\users\user\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server” Any instructions for Windows? I’m stuck dead in the water, and I’m about to just copy files directly to the SD card and use VLC or MX player instead, since that WORKS. It’s a shame I paid for a Lifetime Pass to Plex, since this is the ONE AND ONLY feature that I wanted that suckered me into paying for the Pass. My new tablet can play any of my file types with another media player (because 2020), so this transcoding is just killing me and my server for literally no reason at all.

UPDATE: It wasn’t as bad as all that. It turned out to be about 48 hours of constant transcoding. I had to set my tablet to never turn off during the night, because that would stop the process. 2 days and nights of this, for about 350 GB of files. This should have been about 1 hour of transfer without the transcode. Granted, my tablet can’t decode h265 “natively”, meaning hardware. But the Plex app should have a software decode just like VLC does to just run a h265 file. It would have been so much simpler. VLC is a fine player, it just lacks the organization and integration with my library. Anyway, this pain is all in the past now.

2 Likes
56

@nlaslett As @halbradbury mentioned, the paths you provided are not the ones for a windows installation of PMS. Could you find those out? I seem to have stumbled upon a profiles folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Resources\Profiles but as you also said, I see all the default profiles in there, so what is the correct path where I shall create the custom profile?

I’m trying to get sync to not transcode when syncing onto an iPad, even though it somehow does not transcode when syncing to my android phone, which cannot actually even play x265 10bit files natively or otherwise.

57

It would be great to get a response from Plex on this. Because of the sync feature, both I and a relative bought Plex pass only to find that you can’t even copy original quality without transcoding–makes no sense. If a device can direct play with no issue, it supports the original file format, right? This strikes me more as an odd design choice than as something required for compatibility.

58

Yeah, I have the same problem: I just want direct download, cause its compatible, but Plex still convert from compatible to compatible :disappointed:

I hope, we got after all this years help with this Plex Pass future!

59

Here’s my solution to the problem with my setup. Hope it helps…
PMS: 1.21.3.4021 on raspberry Pi
iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 14.4 App version: 7.13

Find the iOS.xml file that Plex has created and copy it to somewhere you can edit it:

sudo cp /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Profiles/iOS.xml /home/pi

Open the file using Bracket (or similar).
Change the file to read:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Client name="iOS">
  <!-- Author: Plex Inc. -->
  <!-- This profile is used by A5 and higher devices (starting with iPhone 4S and iPad 3) -->
  <Settings>
    <Setting name="DirectPlayStreamSelection" value="true" />
    <Setting name="StreamUnselectedIncompatibleAudioStreams" value="true" />
  </Settings>
  <TranscodeTargets>
    <VideoProfile container="mp4" codec="h264" audioCodec="aac" subtitleCodec="mov_text" context="static" />
    <VideoProfile protocol="hls" container="mpegts" codec="h264" audioCodec="aac,mp3" subtitleCodec="eia_608_embedded" context="streaming">
      <Setting name="HlsExtraMultiChannelAudioStream" value="ac3" />
    </VideoProfile>
    <MusicProfile container="mp3" codec="mp3" />
    <PhotoProfile container="jpeg" />
    <SubtitleProfile protocol="hls" container="webvtt" subtitleCodec="webvtt"/>
  </TranscodeTargets>
  <DirectPlayProfiles>
    <VideoProfile container="mp4,mov" codec="h264,mpeg4" audioCodec="aac" subtitleCodec="mov_text,tx3g,ttxt,text" />
    <!-- Allow Direct Play of HLS content  -->
    <VideoProfile protocol="hls" container="mpegts" codec="h264" audioCodec="aac" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp3" codec="mp3" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp4" codec="aac" />
    <MusicProfile container="mp4" codec="alac" />
    <MusicProfile container="m4a" codec="alac" />
    <MusicProfile container="flac" codec="flac" />
    <PhotoProfile container="jpeg" />
  </DirectPlayProfiles>
  <CodecProfiles>
    <VideoCodec name="h264">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="video.width" value="1920" isRequired="true" />
        <UpperBound name="video.height" value="1080" isRequired="true" />
        <UpperBound name="video.bitDepth" value="8" />
        <NotMatch name="video.separateFields" value="1" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoCodec>
    <VideoAudioCodec name="*">
      <Limitations>
        <UpperBound name="audio.channels" value="2" onlyTranscodes="true" />
      </Limitations>
    </VideoAudioCodec>
  </CodecProfiles>
</Client>

Copy the file to the user created Profiles directory:

sudo cp /home/pi/iOS.xml /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Profiles

Change the read/write permits of the file (I did it directly on the raspberry UI)

Change the owner to Plex: (Make sure you’re at the correct directory before changing the owner)
sudo chown plex iPhone.xml

Restart server:
sudo service plexmediaserver restart

Make sure you have sync enabled for your device by following the sync setup guide.

Start syncing a library from Plex web. Limit it to 1 song at 320 kbps (IMPORTANT). This one song won’t be synced at original as far as I can see

Open the mobile App and change the sync setting by:
Downloads & Sync → Manage → Music (or what your library is called):
Audio Quality = Highest
Limit = None

Stop doing anything else with Plex but monitor the conversion tab on Plex web and see all the songs go through ‘conversion’ (nothing actually changes) and have patience as all the songs are synced to your mobile. It took more than an hour for me (≈5000 songs).

I’ve not been able to 100% confirm no conversion but based on the following I assume nothing has been converted:

  • Size: Plex App Documents & Data takes up 102.48GB on iPhone vs. 99.23GB on Music on App (I assume the 3GB is for metadata and thumbnails)
  • Conversion on a Raspberry Pi showed all the songs run through faster than I could read them, which wouldn’t be the case if it was actually converting based on timespans it has taken my raspberry Pi convert short home videos.
60

Not that anyone cares, but here is my “solution” when I need to load files quickly : I use an RJ45 to USB-C adapter… and use DS File. Thus, I get my files very very quickly. (At more than 100MB/s.)

I suggest to consider this option if you do not have few hours to spare.

PS : I also noticed at some point that Plex cannot sync more content even if I have enough space (on my iPad, it’s when I would have less than roughly 64GB available after the sync.)